Global Policy Forum

By Nduka Uzuakpundu

The current phase in the Liberia crisis is, perhaps, the most crucial. Throughout last week, a greater part of the country's capital, Monrovia, came under ferocious pounding by operatives of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). The United States embassy compound, as well as those of some unidentified international agencies and shopping centres were hit. About 120 people were reported killed in the first three days of the renewed fighting. The humanitarian crisis was said to have deteriorated to the degree that the internally displaced had to take shelter in schools, churches and any available open space far removed from the scene of the conflict. Cholera is feared to be spreading fast in the absence of potable water, what with the taps constructed by the European Union having gone dry. The food situation is dire. The Taylor administration says the LURD rebels are to blame for provoking the clashes, which began, in what is now a usual fashion, at time when, for one, peace moves towards signing a durable cease-fire between government troops and the rebels was still going on in Accra, Ghana, and on the other, when the United Nations Security Council, the Bush administration and leaders of the Economic Community of West African States were yet to send in troops – basically to prevent further exchange of fire by both sides.

At this moment, a cease-fire can only be negotiated if only the rebels pull back well beyond shelling range. Defence Minister, Daniel Chea, was reported as saying that it would be unacceptable if the rebels withdrew to the Po River, 21 kilometres from the outskirts of Monrovia, rather than all the way back to their stronghold at Tubmanburg, another 40 kilometres further north. The U.N. Special Representative, Jacques Klein, told the U.N. Security Council that: "Now, we stand between two options: hope and disaster. Hope that we can quickly move troops in, stop the killing and stabilise the situation. Disaster, if nothing is done."

But, pending the arrival of the peace-keeping troops – and this will not be in the next three weeks – thanks to the sanguinary "Battle of Monrovia" – it appears the first 1,500 would be drawn from the Nigerian contingent in UNAMSIL – U.N. Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone – there is some bent among the LURD rebels to sustain the present distemper partly to draw international opprobrium against President Charles Taylor, whose continued stay in office has been ruled as being less helpful to the crisis.

The other thinking, which appears quite persuasive to some analysts, is that the clashes taking place some 80 kilometres from Monrovia may have been triggered off not only to fix the heat of a people distraught and dissatisfied with the failure of the Taylor administration to maintain peace and the attendant deplorable humanitarian crisis on Taylor himself, but also to make even foreign intervention, however well intended – which is almost certain to be a welcome relief to Taylor and his associates – a relief from being dragged or abducted – if they were to take refuge in Nigeria, for instance to face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Freetown-based Special Court – an impossibility. That, in part, is structured on the calculation that Washington, the Security Council and the Obasanjo administration would be less willing to send in troops when the Liberian water is still perilous.

By late last week, there were pointers to the effect that the Security Council, worried over the insecurity of life and property in Monrovia, was looking up to the Senegal meeting of regional chiefs of staff at which it was decided to dispatch the first batch of Nigeria troops, as one that may eventually draw Washington into the fray. That Washington will not be actively engaged in Liberia has been registered by the fact a group of American defence experts were in Monrovia recently to find out the extent to which Washington would be involved militarily in Liberia. Taylor has given Washington the assurance, though, of the safety of her troops in Liberia; that it should not be haunted by the Somalia experience about a decade ago. And why not. It was a nasty experience for Washington when it led the U.N. troops in "Operation Restore Hope" in that country, which is about the best global example of a failed state. After some shocking casualties and instances of humiliation, the troops had to scuttle out of the country, where almost every adult was an armed operative of one war lord or the other. The abrupt abortion of Operation Restore Hope was a harsh reminder of just how American troops hurried, dishonourably, out of Vietnam a little before the fall of Saigon on April 27, 1975.

Taylor is not really a popular leader. His past has made almost every other West African democrat – apart from Ghanaian President John Kuffor and Obasanjo to be symbolically sympathetic to Liberians because Accra is currently occupying the topmost seat of ECOWAS – and so bound to make a trouble-shooting move and Abuja, for reasons bothering on ‘big brother complex', has to service its leadership role in the sub-region – to maintain a cultivated silence. Worse still, Taylor's opponents say, rather sarcastically, that he is their mentor: they, too, in his fashion, could take up arms in the expectation of sacking the current tenant at the palace. The need to bring back peace to Liberia has since topped foreign policy agenda in Washington – so driven by the September 11, 2001 bombings. But, recently, there was an initial opposition to a US-led peace intervention in Liberia predicated on the failure of Operation Restore Hope in Somalia during which 18 American troops were killed.

About last February, there was a 35-page strategic intelligence to the effect that it would be in Washington's long term interest to be directly involved in reshaping post-Taylor Liberia. There has to be a new defence-security system that would command the confidence of Liberians. Liberians in exile would be allowed to return home and take constructive part in politics, economic and educational reconstruction.

Child soldiers

Child soldiers – on both the rebels' side – some 400 of whom have been withdrawn and disarmed by non-governmental organisations from the war front – would have to be rehabilitated. A post-Taylor Liberia of reconciled differences – where there's little destabilising bitterness, where human rights and rule of law are respected – may have a salutary effect on the Mano River Basin, Senegal and Cote d'Ivoire. "A Peace, Security and Stabilisation (PSS) model", as the intelligence tagged it for that troubled half of ECOWAS. The Bush administration would seem to see with PSS in Liberia as a basis for counter-terrorist measures in the West African sub-region, for that part of the Atlantic seaboard would soon witness a heavy traffic of U.S.-bound vessels bearing crude oil from Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Cameroun and Angola. This, essentially, ought to be one aspect of a redefinition of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. It recongnises the imperative of booting out the nuisance called Charles Taylor, as it tries to de-mine, as it were, the future route of a projected alternative source of major oil supply to Washington – now that the Arab Gulf is proving increasingly treacherous and terribly hostile.

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